Jillette Johnson tries out her new songs in mini-tour

Sunday

May 14, 2017 at 12:01 AMMay 14, 2017 at 9:18 AM

When we talked to Jillette Johnson near the end of 2013, the Pound Ridge, New York native was garnering accolades for her debut album “Water in a Whale,” and being compared to singer-songwriters like Fiona Apple, Joni Mitchell and Carole King, while a few enthusiastic listeners even brought out the Adele card. We felt that [...]

jaymiller

When we talked to Jillette Johnson near the end of 2013, the Pound Ridge, New York native was garnering accolades for her debut album “Water in a Whale,” and being compared to singer-songwriters like Fiona Apple, Joni Mitchell and Carole King, while a few enthusiastic listeners even brought out the Adele card.

We felt that Johnson's sharp lyrics, and soulful delivery evoked Laura Nyro most of all, and while she couldn't say she'd listened to a lot of Nyro's work, Johnson admitted it was a comparison she'd heard before.

Saturday night Johnson, now 27, performed her next-to-last gig on a short six-date tour, trying out the material from her forthcoming Rounder Records debut, at the tiny Lilypad in Inman Square, Cambridge, proving that the intervening years have honed her lyrical gift and focused her musical abilities. The new album was produced in Nashville by Dave Cobb, the Grammy winner who's best known for his stellar work with Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton, and “All I Ever See In You Is Me” is slated for a July 28 release.

Playing for a small crowd of about 50 fans–one whole row of whom had driven up from Connecticut to see the show–Johnson was relaxed and warm, with singer-songwriter/pal Danica Dora joining her for harmony vocals on about half the songs in her 80-minute set. Johnson's alto vocals were in top form, and as usual she could easily slide into her gorgeous falsetto with ease, but her piano playing seemed especially superb, her dense and dynamic melodies ringing out in the small room.

There was a terrifically engaging melody in the ballad “He's My Angel,” for instance, while the plaintive, uptempo “Nobody Knows Anything” displayed her lyrical gifts as it portrayed the general dislocation of modern life. There's a stately quality to the melody in the title cut from the forthcoming album, and after Johnson dedicated it to her mother for Mother's Day, it was easy to see the way “All I Ever See In You Is Me” is an homage to her whole family.

Poking fun at her own tendency to write romantic songs that have a tinge of melancholy, Johnson noted she had written at least one certifiably happy tune, and “You Can Tell Me In the Morning” was a warm and tender reverie, enhanced by Dora's harmony vocals. One of the Johnson ‘golden oldies' she did was her popular “Cameron,” which deals with a cross-dressing friend and his travails, and its bright melody and her passionate vocal as she sang lines like “you are not an alien..” generated a big audience response.

One sort of bland spot in the night's music was another tune about family ties, and while “Like You Raised Me” has some to-the-heart words, Johnson's conversational delivery was just too tame. But that flat spot was quickly redeemed with the uptempo, almost striding soul-rock of “Morning Blue,” where her voice hinted at gospel. And Johnson's piano introduction to her older “Bassett Hound” was wonderfully dynamic and beautiful, and a perfect way to open that plaintive love song.

The evening's only cover was a delightfully re-worked “Willin',” where Johnson's magnificent piano arrangement transformed the song, while the vocal harmonies between her and Dora hewed reverently to the Little Feat classic. Noting how she'd moved from New York City to Los Angeles to, finally, Nashville, Johnson explained how her new “Throw Out Your Mirror” grew out of a minor camping misadventure, and the self-deprecating ballad was both humorous and affirming.

The shimmering piano lines of her older “When the Ship Goes Down”–available on jukeboxes everywhere–probably justified those Adele comparisons, as the bittersweet, post-breakup self appraisal built to a big cathartic finish. The dazzling piano work on “Love Is Blind” suggested bluesy jazz melded with classical roots, for an utterly transfixing, orchestral sound.

The regular set ended with a tune Johnson calls her pep talk to herself amid the music world's challenges, and “Bunny” was a light-hearted pop tune with quirky appeal, as she sang of “riding on a sunbeam…lost at sea..” For her two-song encore, Johnson started with the unrecorded “Lowlife,” getting its live debut, and that tune was surely memorable. As haunting piano lines evoked the feel of someone sliding down a cliff and unable to get a grip, Johnson sang the kind of lines you might expect if Salvador Dali wrote lyrics, in a surreal commentary on life in 2017.

While she noted she had played the last song probably too much, Johnson's “Pauvre Coeur,” with its riveting storyline of trying to salvage a demented love, is still a dramatic tour de force, and her rendition is still every bit as heart rending as it was the first time she sang it.

Chatting briefly after the show, Johnson said she had very much enjoyed working with Cobb, and found the whole recording process to be “very organic.” She noted the new record will also include a rhythm section on most cuts, but doesn't stray far away from the stripped down format in which

Jillette Johnson's new album is due July 28: she tried out the new music in a small show at The Lilypad Saturday night